I was thinking about this the other day, and one idea I had was to empty the bottle into another vessel, and set fire to the cork that is left behind. I imagine if you got it to burn long enough, it'd either fall to pieces, or you'd be able to break it up with a piece of metal or something. Then you'd need to really seriously sterilize and clean out the original bottle, and return the whisky to it.

Perhaps another way to do it would be to pour enough wet sand into the bottle so that with a little manipulation, you get the cork at the shoulder of the bottle. The sand would give you something to press the cork against, making cutting/breaking the cork easier?

My ideas are pretty far fetched, but i really can't think of another way of getting a big piece of cork out of a bottle. Compressed air perhaps?

Decant the whisky and lay the bottle on its side overnight, with a small dish of cork food under the open mouth of the bottle.

Or make a loop out of a coat hanger and use it to pull the cork up to where you can get a corkscrew into it, and pull it out. If you can work it out, get the coat hanger out before you do the heavy work.

(I thought the latter idea would sound less far-fetched if I gave the other idea first.)

I really don't think you'd be able to apply enough pressure to put a cork screw into it with your coathangery technique. I think the coaxing with food ideas is quite reasonable. Either that, or talk it out of there with reason, in a calm quiet voice.

I always use a corkscrew. If that fails, your only option may be to push the cork down with a knife and pour the whisky into another bottle (or have a party and finish the thing off).

BTW, I've had broken corks only in my most expensive single malt bottlings so I don't think it was anything to do with it being a blend. I _have_ had many breakages from Diageo though so perhaps they have or had a bad cork source for a while?

I would pour the remaining whisky into another container, but through a coffee filter or cheese cloth, obviously unused! This filters the cork out of the good stuff of course! And then take a dish cloth or something similar and fold and roll into itself, with a corner on top, kind of like folding a paper airplane, and then the "nose" of the plane, ie the corner of the cloth, gets folded down. It works best with a thinner restaurant napkin that has been pressed, even starched, as it retains it's form better. Then put the napkin/cloth inside the bottle and jiggle the bottle until the cork falls into the napkin, into the "nose." Pull the napkin out of the bottle, with the cork in it. It's probably not easy to understand it here, but ask your local bartender or anyone else that knows "bar tricks!"

Last edited by Di Blasi on Sun May 07, 2006 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A long thin clean wood screw and screw driver might work better than a cork screw. You need some thing to screw into it and grip but sometimes cork screws are too crude. I have used this method on both broken whiskey and wines corks. Sometimes it works sometimes it does not. Be carefull and apply as little pressues as possible while screwing, pull it slightly when you have a small grip (to tighten seal) screw a bit more and again pull etc keep doing this until the screw it totally through the cork. Once inbedded you can use pliers to pull it out hopefully. If you can't get a screw long enough tie a bit of wire around the top of a smaller screw and use the wire to pull out the screw and hopefully cork.

Di Blasi wrote:I would pour the remaining whisky into another container, but through a coffee filter or cheese cloth, obviously unused! This filters the cork out of the good stuff of course! And then take a dish cloth or something similar and fold and roll into itself, with a corner on top, kind of like folding a paper airplane, and then the "nose" of the plane, ie the corner of the cloth, gets folded down. It works best with a thinner restaurant napkin that has been pressed, even starched, as it retains it's form better. Then put the napkin/cloth inside the bottle and jiggle the bottle until the cork falls into the napkin, into the "nose." Pull the napkin out of the bottle, with the cork in it. It's probably not easy to understand it here, but ask your local bartender or anyone else that knows "bar tricks!"

That pretty damn clever, and doesn't involve burning things or using sand. What the hell was I thinking.

Depending on whether the broken cork is still in the neck and, if so, how far down it is you could use the wine bottle trick. Take a corkscrew and screw it in at an angle. If the angle is large enough the pressure will be toward the side of the bottle and won't push the cork further down. Then, push the cork screw against the top of the mouth; in this way the corkscrew is acting as a lever and the mouth of the bottle is acting as the fulcrum. Slowly press on the lever, with the pressure focused on the fulcrum, and move the cork upward.

Of course, wine corks fit in the neck much more tightly and the cork's pressure increases the effectiveness of this method.

Would'nt the simplest solution be to remove the whisky to another container - let the cork dry over night and the use something long and sharp (screwdriver, thin knife, etc.) to break the cork into smaller pieces and then let gravity do its trick ?

Remove the cork, save the whisky

Aggiesipper:
I had a thought last night (Down! Tattie', down!) that may help. There's a type of "cork screw" that has two thin metal prongs that slide down the sides of the bottle between the cork and the glass. The handle is then given a slight twist and the cork pulls out smoothly. I've only seen them in retaurants, but may do the trick. ( Either that or some complex Achimedian screw arrangement). Musky Pete

Two pronged attack

Mr. T.:
Yeah I would have initially though so, but nothing ventured nothing gained. When using this type of cork screw on wine bottles, the corks seem to flare out and (due to the back pressure, I assume) don't get shoved down. So it would be worth the risk, wouldn't it?

I had a cork break off on one of my bottles last month and I was able to use a regular corkscrew carefully to remove the remains. Luckily enough of the top half was left to recork the bottle. Musky Pete

So, what is it?

Since Mr.T is involved in this conversation I feel obilged to point out that, technically, this device is not a cork screw.

Quite right, Mr. Picky totally missed that one. I pondered what to call it and decided on "cork screw" simply because I don't remember what it's really called. I didn't think two pronged cork remover would do. Anyone?
Pete